Nobel literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa died Sunday at the age of 89 in the Peruvian capital, his family announced on the social network X. 

"With deep sorrow, we announce that our father, Mario Vargas Llosa, has passed away today in Lima, surrounded by his family and in peace," wrote his eldest son Alvaro in a message also signed by his siblings Gonzalo and Morgana Vargas Llosa. 

Rumors of the writer's deteriorating health had spread in recent months. 

In October, his son Alvaro said he was "on the verge of turning 90, an age when you have to reduce the intensity of your activities a little."  

Born into a middle-class Peruvian family, Vargas Llosa was one of the greats of the Latin American literary "boom" of the 1960s and 1970s, along with Colombia's Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Argentina's Julio Cortazar.